Albert Brooks: Lost in the Academy

One of the performances I thought was a lock for a nomination was Albert Brooks’s supporting turn in “Drive,” in which he brings a quiet and controlled veneer of streetwise bonhomie to his character’s violence; rarely has the velvet glove been worn more suavely, on-screen, by the iron fist. There’s one scene, near the film’s end (those who have seen the movie know just which one I mean), in which he deals death with such a soothing warmth as to make the resulting untimely and bloody demise seem even enviable. It’s an astonishing moment in a movie of utter falsehood—indeed, the scripted moment has a terrible falseness, which is why what Brooks makes of it is all the more astonishing. It seems pretty clear that Brooks suffered from backlash against the film (which received a nomination only for best sound editing): in a year that saw such soft soap as “The Artist,” “The Descendants,” and “War Horse” get nominated for Best Picture, it’s easy to see why Brooks’s terrifying turn got snubbed. Christopher Plummer is a fine actor; but his work in “Beginners” is cutesy and sudsy (I don’t blame him as much as I do the director, Mike Mills) and seems to beg for the embrace the Academy is giving it—and to reproach silently, in the name of all elders, anyone who’d deny him.